


Displaced

by CamsthiSky



Series: Angst Prompts Vol 1 [11]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman and Robin (Comics), DCU
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-03
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-12-23 08:34:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11986149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CamsthiSky/pseuds/CamsthiSky
Summary: "Bruce’s vision wavers, and only once he steadies himself does he look up to find—Dick. But not Dick. Because Dick is eleven years old, and this man is clearly only a few years younger than Bruce himself is. If that. But no. Bruce would know those bright blue eyes anywhere. This is Dick. This is his son." or Bruce accidentally time travels





	Displaced

**Author's Note:**

> yorulun asked: Prompt 9 between Bruce and Bat Fam where perhaps Bruce was magically transformed into something else, be it angst or comedy. I need more fic with Bruce bonding with his kids.
> 
> This didn’t turn into exactly what you wanted, and I’m sorry about that. But I have some problems working with specific prompts like this sometimes. I swear my fingers have minds of their own sometimes. I hope you still enjoy!
> 
> This is set a few weeks after Bruce comes back from being lost in time.

 

"How many times have I told you not to run down the stairs, Dick?” Bruce says when he hears feet stomping down into the Cave. His head is pounding something fierce, and he’s lying on a medical cot. Must have gotten hurt on patrol then. Wouldn’t be the first time. He only pushes himself up when the steps falter at the bottom of the stairs, and then he tenses.

Because that’s not Dick. That’s—he doesn’t know  _who_  that is, but it’s not his son. A young man, maybe seventeen or eighteen, with dark hair and blue eyes that sport dark shadows underneath, is standing at the bottom of the steps. He’s also extremely pale, and he’s staring at Bruce like he’s just seen a ghost.

“Who—” is all Bruce manages to get out before the other cuts him off.

“I’m just gonna go get—get Alfred and the others,“ the teen says, blinking rapidly. And before Bruce can respond (like ask how the hell this guy knows Alfred, or why he’s in Bruce’s  _secret cave)_ , he’s gone. Up the stairs and into the manor.

It takes a few minutes for Bruce to make himself move from the medical cot and tumble over to the stairs. He’s just about to try and go up them when the clock above him opens and he hears a sharp,  _“Bruce!”_

Bruce’s vision wavers, and only once he steadies himself does he look up to find—Dick. But not Dick. Because Dick is eleven years old, and this man is clearly only a few years younger than Bruce himself is. If that.

“Dick?” he asks, his brow furrowing, and No-Dick supports him when he wavers again, leading him back over to sit on the cot. “Or are you—you can’t be John.”

Not-Dick sucks in a sharp breath, and no. Bruce would know those bright blue eyes anywhere. This is Dick. This is his son. But somehow, he’s in his twenties, not his little boy who’d just celebrated his eleventh birthday. It looks like Dick’s aged fifteen years in a night, and that’s when Bruce’ circling mind really starts working overtime.

“What’s going on?” Bruce asks, meeting his son’s eyes. “Why do you look so—is this some kind of vision? Time travel?”

Dick grimaces. “Our best guess is time displacement,” Dick tells him. He’s searching Bruce’s face, and Bruce searches back. There are so many—lines. Scars. Even a few freshly stitched cuts on his forehead. His hair is still a mess, though, and his eyes shine with that same troublemaker glow they’d had just yesterday when Bruce had found Dick sliding the banister full speed. “We found you unconscious on the street while we were looking for our Bruce.”

“I see.”

Bruce had known the possibility existed, but this is his first experience with it. And Bruce doesn’t doubt that Dick is lying, either. Which means—it means something that Bruce isn’t sure he wants to explore right now. So, he cups Dick’s face with his hands, and just holds him.

Dick’s grimace turns into a frown. “Please don’t look at me like that.”

“You grew up.”

“Yeah,” Dick says, covering one of Bruce’s hands with his own. “I guess I did.”

_“Grayson!”_  a voice calls from up the stairs of the  _still open clock_ , and Dick smiles fondly at the call. Bruce lets his hands fall away from his son’s face and turns towards where Dick’s looking. There’s indistinct murmuring between two voices—the one that had called Dick and the young man from when Bruce had first woken up, Bruce thinks—from upstairs.

“Dick,” Bruce says, feeling alarm welling up inside him. Seeing Dick all grown up had thrown him off, and he curses himself silently for forgetting about the teen from before. “Why are there more people in my house than you and Alfred?”

Dick coughs awkwardly. “You may have, uh, adopted a few more kids.”

Bruce honestly doesn’t know how to respond to a statement like that. But luckily, he doesn’t have to, because a kid comes barreling down the stairs and over to Bruce and Dick, barely paying the former any attention. The teen from before follows, but at a much slower pace.

“Grayson!” the kid calls again, his dark eyes furious as he crosses his arms over his chest. “I demand you do something about Drake!”

Dick sighs, but it’s exasperated, like he’s one this a billion times. “I’m sure that whatever Tim did to you was harmless. I’m not going to kick him out just because he accidentally upset you.”

“Oh, no,” the teen—Tim Drake, Bruce is guessing, which raises a lot more questions than it answers—says, his eyebrows raised. He’s a lot twitchier, Bruce notices, giving Bruce side-glances every so often. “I definitely did it on purpose. You know, since Damian tried to stab me again.”

“It’s not my fault you can’t dodge properly,” the newly named Damian sneers. “I am doing you a favor by—”

“Enough,” Dick says, and Bruce is slightly taken aback. Because he’s never heard Dick sound so authoritative before. And Bruce is having a hard time lining up this man with his eleven year old back—back in his own time. And these are supposed to be his  _kids?_  “Damian, we talked about trying to kill Tim. And Tim, really? He’s eleven years old and he’s still trying to break out of old habits.”

“He’s a demon,” Tim hisses, his fists clenching and eyes narrowing as he takes a step forward. “He tried to  _kill me_ and now he—”

“ _Tim,”_  Dick says, eyes flashing, and Tim’s mouth snaps shut as he deflates. Those shadows under his eyes look darker than ever, though, and Bruce watches as the teen looks away from Dick and closes in on himself. After a quiet moment of Damian and Bruce both looking in between the two, Dick finally slumps. “Look, Tim. I know it’s been hard. And that this situation is kind of like the one before, but—”

“This is  _nothing_  like before,” Damian snarls. “Father is not dead this time. He is alive.”

Bruce raises his eyebrows, and cuts in before Tim or Dick can say anything to that. “Dead? I died?”

Dick winces. “Kind of. It’s more like you were lost in time.”

“I see,” Bruce says. But he really doesn’t. “So, is anybody interested in telling me what’s going on?”

This is one of the most insane things to ever happen to him, and he thinks he should be actively searching for a way home. To his Dick. Who is eleven years old and probably scared.  _Time displacement,_  Dick had said. That meant he needed to go home.

“We ran some tests,” Tim says quietly, and he’s staring at the floor. “Physically, you’re around Dick’s age, so we think something may have gone wrong when Bruce—our Bruce tried to travel to a different dimension.”

“Which means,” Dick continues, a sad smile on his face, “that the only way we’ll know where our Bruce is, is when he comes back.”

“Do you think your version of me is in my time, then?” Bruce asks, relaxing by a fraction. “And I assume there is some sort of device that can be altered to fix this, as well. The same that was being used to jump dimensions?”

Dick winces. “Sort of. Tim and B could probably modify it, but Bruce took the device with him when—”

A sound—louder than thunder—decides then is the perfect moment to try and rupture Bruce’s eardrums. Bruce covers his ears with his hands and watches as a bright light flashes in the middle of the cave, and when it disappears—both the light and the noise—all that’s left standing there is an eleven year old Dick Grayson and an older—well. An older Bruce Wayne.

He has to be in his forties at the least, with more scars and wrinkles than Bruce has ever seen in the mirror. The other him looks dispassionate and  _grumpy_ , and Bruce can’t help the wrongness bubbling in his stomach. No one should look like that after spending five minutes with Dick, who is literally a ray of pure (troublemaking) sunshine. And this older version of himself had raised Dick into a young man.

Why? What happened?

Dick—Dickie, his eleven year old son from his time, the one Bruce isn’t sure how to admit he’s relieved to see-bounces up to him, a gigantic smile on his face. “Hey, B! Heard you got lost. Need some help finding your way back home?”

Bruce smiles fondly, and then, when Dickie jumps at him to wrap his arm around Bruce’s neck, Bruce slides off the cot to catch him and hug him back. Maybe he can admit it after all. “It’s good to see you, Dick.”

Dickie detaches from Bruce’s neck, stepping back a bit but not losing complete contact, and that grin turns into a smirk as he puts his hands on his hips. “Good to see you, too, B.” Dickie jabs a thumb over to where the other Bruce is watching them. “That Bruce is crabbier than you would believe. All he does is grunt and brood all the time.”

The older Dick laughs sharply, and everyone looks over at him. “What?” he asks as his chuckles die down, looking at the other Bruce in particular. “Little me is right. And I’m sure Jay will be happy to make a sign for you, too. ‘World’s okay-est dad. Warning: will use grunts and brooding as main forms of communication.’”

The other Bruce shoots Dick a no-nonsense look. “You got me that ‘World’s Okay-est Dad’ mug for me for Christmas five years ago. Try again.”

Dick shrugs, but he doesn’t look fazed. “I’m sure Cass would be able to come up with something.”

“Is that really how you want to get those two together?” Tim asks, seemingly over whatever was bothering him earlier. “You know that those two will literally turn the entire manor into complete chaos, right?”

Damian snorts. “Like it’s not already chaos? You and Todd seem to bring it with you wherever you go.”

“What about Dick? He literally dyed B’s cape pink last week. Alfred had to make a new one.”

“Grayson is—tolerable,” Damian grumbles. “You and Todd, however, should be banned from being in the same room as each other.”

“You’re such a—”

“Okay!” Dick—the older one—chimes in, his cheer sounding a little forced now. He turns to the older Bruce. “A little help here?”

The other Bruce huffs a laugh, shaking his head. “Don’t mind me. The World’s Okay-est Dad thinks you’ve got this one handled.”

“Bruce,” Dick whines.

“Wow,” Dickie says into Bruce’s ear as the four dissolve into another petty argument. “They fight a lot.”

Bruce chuckles—because, yeah. They do. They’ve been arguing since Bruce woke up. But, there’s something underneath the fighting that resounds in Bruce’s chest. He can see it now that he has Dickie in his arms, settling the ruffled parts of his mind.

And part of him, especially seeing Dick grown up like this, scolding his younger brothers, it makes Bruce think that maybe he’s done  _something_  right with this kid in front of him. Even if he doesn’t quite believe his family will grow this big. After all, Dick and Alfred are the only family he needs.

“What say we go home?” Bruce asks.

Dickie smiles. “Yeah, I’d like that.” And then he pauses a moment before he says, “I missed you, Bruce. It wasn’t very long but—but it was still a little scary not being able to find anyone but that older Bruce.”

“I know,” Bruce says, because as much as he hates to admit it, he thinks it was a little terrifying for him, too. To see Dick grown up, his age, at a place where he didn’t seem to need Bruce anymore. “I missed you, too.”

And years later, after Bruce and Dick are returned to their own time, after Dick’s become Nightwing and proved that he really  _doesn’t_  need Bruce anymore, Bruce finds a kid trying—and succeeding—to jack the tires from the Batmobile, and he does something he’s really only done once before.

He takes him home.


End file.
